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Archive for March 10th, 2012

Even this deep into the era of IP and design reuse, it’s been my thesis that things are not quite as far along as many in the industry would like you to believe. With that attitude in hand, I spoke with three different companies in the IP space who disagree, although they admit issues still remain.

You can read my conclusions below from what they had to say, or you can read the original interviews and draw your own conclusions …

* IP is a reality: Over the last 10 years, the reluctance to buy IP has subsided, because third-party IP is better than ever, and the companies that sell it have come to see themselves principally as product companies, not services companies.

* Standards and tools: Various wrapper standards and IP integration tools are easing the burden of using IP in a design.

* NIH still a reality: Concern still lingers, often without basis, that if I didn’t design it myself, I shouldn’t bank my product and my job on somebody else’s design bit.

* Risk Aversion still a reality: Buying IP is still not great for the highly risk adverse, people who need to guarantee a block is interoperable, meets required specs, and has been sufficiently deployed to work out the bugs. (more…)

Even this deep into the era of IP and design reuse, it’s been my impression that things are not quite as far along as many in the industry would like you to believe. With that attitude in mind, I spoke with Bernd Stamme, Director of Marketing & Applications at Kilopass Technology, who convinced me otherwise, although with several caveats.

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Q: What kind of IP are people buying these days?

Bernd Stamme: They’re buying everything that has to do with performance – computer performance, networking performance, and elements that control that performance.

The one way you can distinguish yourself from the competition is to go faster. You can use IP for CPUs or GPUs, or off-the-shelf interfaces. At some point, you’ll run out of what you can get, however, and you’ll need to build auxiliary units around it to improve performance for certain operations. Then you’ll be building co-processors, specific circuits to accelerate [the system] and get better performance than your competition.